L’Ochestre de Jeux Video Appreciation Post

I’ve made it no mystery that my love of video game music rivals my love of video games themselves. Though I’m no musician, I can appreciate (and am often mystified by) what music can do both on its own and for other mediums. Though there are a number of film scores that have left an impact on me (namely Joe Hisaishi’s work on Hayao Miyazaki’s filmography), for the most part, I think the musical side of my heart belongs to video game scores. Whether it’s the infectious soundtracks of the Mega Man series, the atmospheric sounds of Donkey Kong Country, or the epic scores of Dark Souls, video game music continues to shape and mold my creativity as much as video games themselves.

As such, I not only have a rather impressive collection of video game soundtracks (if I do say so myself), but frequently seek out remixes, covers and live performances of video game music. And a number of months ago, I discovered one of the best.

L’Orchestre de Jeux Video is an ongoing orchestra that specializes in video game music. As someone who has frequently sought out video game orchestras, I do believe L’Orchestra de Jeux Video (or ‘OJV’ for short) is the most consistently excellent I have discovered so far.

Some of their performances reflect the original feeling of the music they’re covering, brought up to the epic score of an orchestra. Other times, they recreate classic pieces in new ways, bringing new appreciation to both the pieces in question as well as OJV’s abilities.

Seriously, I can’t speak highly enough about what OJV does. Oftentimes when I’m writing a review late at night, I listen to their performances, and I swear it helps my creative juices flow, and even some of my trickier reviews start coming together. I guess you could argue that a number of my writings owe a little something to OJV.

But enough jib jab from me, here are some of my favorite performances from OJV, direct from their own YouTube channel.

Let’s start with one of my all-time favorites, Super Mario Galaxy.

A little Banjo-Kazooie always does the heart good.

Here’s an entire performance dedicated to my main man, Bowser.

Some Undertale music, because that’s always wonderful.

Of course, you can never go wrong with the iconic Dr. Wily theme.

And naturally, I of all people have to include their performances of Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG. I just hope they do some more covers from them in the near future, because you can never have too much of a good thing.

 

Simply beautiful!

If you would like to find out more about L’Orchestra de Jeux Video, you can check out their website here. Or you can find more of their performances on their official YouTube channel. It’ll be well worth the time of any lover of video game music.